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A
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The Holdovers
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Legitimately one of the best Christmas movies ever made. It's also the perfect Wes Anderson movie for people who don't like Wes Anderson.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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B
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Napoleon
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Ridley Scott's Napoleon is a battlefield genius and a bedroom klutz, and the latter depiction ends up being a lot more memorable than the first.
Posted Nov 17, 2023
|
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A-
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The Killer
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Michael Fassbender's modern hitman murders people from an abandoned WeWork, eats tactical McMuffins , and sounds like AJ Soprano. Wonderful.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
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A
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Not only worthy of Scorsese's acclaim, but one of the best adaptations of historical non-fiction ever.
Posted Oct 23, 2023
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|
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Cassandro
(2023)
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Vincent Mancini
|
A breezy, beautifully acted ad for its subject that prioritizes what makes him inspirational over what makes him interesting.
Posted Oct 12, 2023
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B+
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The Creator
(2023)
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Vincent Mancini
|
The story is missing some connective tissue and follow through, but the imagery is so evocative that you don't always miss it. There's a textural richness to Edwards' scenes that few filmmakers can match.
Posted Sep 30, 2023
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B+
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Dumb Money
(2023)
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Vincent Mancini
|
'Dumb Money' is pretty good, even if the culture of instant nostalgia that forced it to rush into production to beat out nine competing projects is pretty terrible.
Posted Sep 22, 2023
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D
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Elemental
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
"Trying to make a character out of a cloud" is a sadly apt metaphor for this whole doomed endeavor.
Posted Sep 20, 2023
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A-
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Bottoms
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A comedy so beautifully anarchic it feels like clapter's death rattle.
Posted Sep 01, 2023
|
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C+
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Blue Beetle
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Largely good natured and charmingly Mexican-flavored, it's also crucially lacking in coherent action set pieces. And so it's a bit like a cup full of drywall insulation covered with Tajín and Chamoy.
Posted Aug 21, 2023
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B
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Asteroid City
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A brilliant movie about the Atomic Age trapped inside a dumb framing device about art.
Posted Aug 14, 2023
|
|
A
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Barbie
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Give Gosling the Oscar.
Posted Jul 26, 2023
|
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B
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
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Vincent Mancini
|
Manages to entertainingly encompass every surface-level tenet of an Indiana Jones movie without finding the soul.
Posted Jul 04, 2023
|
|
B
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The Flash
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
We've already seen this premise four or five times, but this is oddly one of the better versions of it, thanks to action scenes that feel like more than placeholders.
Posted Jun 20, 2023
|
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C
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Flamin' Hot
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Flamin Hot sells an Undercover Boss fairytale of capitalism. The actual, Catch Me If You Can-style story, about clever liars and willing cons, would've been much more interesting.
Posted Jun 09, 2023
|
|
D
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Fast X
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Discount action movie slurry.
Posted May 20, 2023
|
|
B-
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Marvel's best movie in at least five years -- and then it goes on for another 40 awful minutes.
Posted May 06, 2023
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|
C
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Cocaine Bear
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
'Cocaine Bear' is like if you bought a funny t-shirt and then found out you had to wear it every day for an entire year. Or like the meme equivalent of your dad catching you smoking and making you finish the pack.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
|
|
D
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
The MCU has become an emotional Ponzi Scheme. You're expected to watch not because this will make you feel something today, but in the hopes that this continuity will matter somewhere down the line.
Posted Feb 17, 2023
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|
C+
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Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
'Avatar' was about a clash of civilizations. 'The Way Of The Water' is a revenge story that wears thin after a while. The whales were cool though.
Posted Dec 19, 2022
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B-
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
(2022)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Much better looking and more tasteful than most Marvel movies, but how many supposedly "anti-colonial" comic book movies are we going to make where the big baddy is another oppressed person?
Posted Nov 15, 2022
|
|
C
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Armageddon Time
(2022)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Paul learns from his wise old grandpa that you should always confront racism, but 'Armageddon Time' never explores what that might look like.
Posted Nov 14, 2022
|
|
C-
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
(2022)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
I was thrilled about the idea of a new Sam Raimi comic book movie, but Doctor Strange 2 suggests that these days, Marvel characters are the Apes and directors are just the Slurp Juice.
Posted May 05, 2022
|
|
C-
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The Batman
(2022)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Controversial opinion: a Batman movie should not be longer than 'The Godfather.'
Posted Mar 11, 2022
|
|
C+
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No Time to Die
(2021)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
The once-insouciant spy hero became intense and obsessive when Daniel Craig started to play him, only to become mawkish and sentimental in his final chapter.
Posted Oct 08, 2021
|
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B
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Venom: Let There Be Carnage
(2021)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Just imagine Look Who's Talking starring Tom Hardy as the baby and Tom Hardy doing a Cookie Monster voice as Bruce Willis. Perfection.
Posted Oct 01, 2021
|
|
B-
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The Suicide Squad
(2021)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
The first half is everything you could want from a superhero movie and the second half is everything we've sadly come to expect from them.
Posted Aug 06, 2021
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|
B-
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Zack Snyder's Justice League
(2021)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
An inspired vision of the same superhero team up plot we've seen 17 times now. Please let it be the last.
Posted Mar 18, 2021
|
|
C
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Pieces of a Woman
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Flattens its characters' grief into the usual collection of festival movie clichés.
Posted Jan 11, 2021
|
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C+
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Wonder Woman 1984
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Entertaining enough, and refreshingly light in many ways, but so vague in all its key points that it's hard to be especially invested.
Posted Dec 24, 2020
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C+
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News of the World
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Tom Hanks educates the ignorant rabble in what feels like a lukewarm liberal take on The Searchers.
Posted Dec 22, 2020
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|
B+
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The Midnight Sky
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Clooney's ambitious, dystopian space drama is slick but never falsely saccharine, a worthy addition to the "sad astronaut" canon.
Posted Dec 22, 2020
|
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C
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Hillbilly Elegy
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Ron Howard turns a tale of entertaining hillbilly dysfunction into a repetitive after-school special.
Posted Nov 24, 2020
|
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A
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Dick Johnson Is Dead
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
The most life-affirming movie about death and dementia ever made. Take it from me, someone who ALWAYS avoids dementia movies.
Posted Oct 09, 2020
|
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C
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2067
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
'2067' looks much more expensive than it is and has an intriguing series of Macguffins, but with hokey dialogue and vague character motivations the second half falls flat.
Posted Oct 02, 2020
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C-
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I'm Thinking of Ending Things
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
An alienating, experimental headscratcher from cinema's sharpest observer of failed relationships.
Posted Sep 18, 2020
|
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A-
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The Devil All the Time
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A spellbinding hillbilly noir with a brilliant cast. A movie where bad things just keep happening but always with a wry sense of the absurd.
Posted Sep 18, 2020
|
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C+
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Tesla
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
'Tesla' almost works as a portrait of the Victorian era, but keeps trying to substitute artistic choices for ideas.
Posted Aug 21, 2020
|
|
C+
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Unhinged
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
This film about Russell Crowe as an Alex Jones-esque road raging lunatic is more a fascinating prospect than a fascinating movie.
Posted Aug 21, 2020
|
|
A-
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Boys State
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A heartening coming-of-age tale wrapped in a heartbreaking political tragedy.
Posted Aug 14, 2020
|
|
A-
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The Swamp
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A must-watch dissection of how politics became sports and why we can't afford to keep treating it that way.
Posted Aug 14, 2020
|
|
B
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Sputnik
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Sputnik's character and fx designers are clearly having fun.
Posted Aug 13, 2020
|
|
B
|
An American Pickle
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A genuinely inspired, Jewish 'Encino man.' Though it fumbles a bit in the middle, the first sequence is the best immigrant comedy since 'Johnny Dangerously.'
Posted Aug 06, 2020
|
|
D-
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The Tax Collector
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Shia Labeouf's tattoo-that-he-got-for-real is the most interesting thing about this, and it's only in the movie for about two seconds.
Posted Aug 06, 2020
|
|
D
|
The Secret: Dare to Dream
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
If you tried to parody 'The Secret's world view to make it look bad it couldn't be much worse than 'The Secret: Dare To Dream.'
Posted Jul 30, 2020
|
|
B-
|
First Cow
(2019)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
'The Revenant' meets a New Yorker cartoon.
Posted Jul 09, 2020
|
|
B-
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Greyhound
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
It's an exciting, non-stop battle from start to finish. Unfortunately it has no characters, only uniforms.
Posted Jul 06, 2020
|
|
B+
|
Welcome to Chechnya
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
A deeply unsettling but necessary watch.
Posted Jul 01, 2020
|
|
B
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Irresistible
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
What seems at first like a naive, neoliberal morality play is actually a *parody* of a neoliberal morality play. And a valid one.
Posted Jun 26, 2020
|
|
A-
|
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
(2020)
|
Vincent Mancini
|
Just about the perfect amount of dumb for a movie like this. I had to force my friends to watch it so I wouldn't have these silly songs stuck in my head alone.
Posted Jun 26, 2020
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